Things have been interesting these last few days. In the wake of the calamitous event that was the late announcement of capstone group assignments I am reminded of the phrase I hear parroted from mouth to mouth, supposedly sourced from military origins of “hurry up and wait”. It is meant to describe the hustle that is put into arranging oneself into a position to best receive the next set of orders… only to sit quietly for an amount of time disproportionate to the effort one made to arrive at the same destination. While I have other projects to distract me, and a shamefully large Steam list to occupy the rest of my time, this has been my capstone experience so far.
I’m not complaining, mind you. I much prefer an abundance of time rather than a deficit. I merely offer that should the dread and severity of that has been described by my senior engineering students of their final year be embellished for the benefit of exaggerating their work ethic, I will be somewhat cross at the stress their testimonies have inflicted upon me in the last few months. The more sensible part of me realizes that this is probably an outcome that I should pray is close tot he truth, as it means that sailing could be somewhat more smooth than I had anticipated. Until then I will opt to take heart their advice and continue to “hurry up and wait.”
Things began when the announcement of group composition was released. I quickly introduced myself and attempted to wrangle my group into a Discord server for collaboration. Our first meeting went swimmingly and concluded with the consensus that we needed to contact our client to further progress in the course. An email later and we were confronted with the reality that a meeting would not occur before the first paper was due. Further attempts to gain feedback resulted in radio silence. We anticipate our first meeting this Monday.
Until then I will do what I can to fulfill the requirements of the course to the satisfaction of whoever is grading my desperate attempt to not completely bullshit. Between you and me though, I’m not confident in my ability to provide quality work given this situation.
In more lighthearted news, the group came to a decision to use Jira for our project management. A small accomplishment, but still possibly amusing to mention. I’m quite satisfied with our group so far. While we haven’t had much of an opportunity to collaborate, at the very least everyone was quick to communicate, and also we all agreed that Discord would make for our main communication platform. An engineer who doesn’t have any interest in gaming is incredibly sketchy, and subject to my suspicion of being a soulless automaton.
The game will change once we get our first meeting on Monday. I am excited to see the vision our client has for the project, as well as further details on what they have planned. Until then I will be a good soldier, hurry up, and wait.